Nan of the Gypsies

CHAPTER XI.

THE DOCTOR TAKES A HAND

Doctor Wainridge had done a little thinking on his own part and he arrived at the Widdemere home early the next morning. Finding that the boy was in a listless state, from which he had been aroused only by his interest in his new friend, the physician, after dismissing the nurse, sat down by the bed-side and took the thin hand in his own.

“Robert, lad,” he began in a low voice that could not possibly be overheard by an intentional or unintentional eavesdropper, “I hear that you have made the acquaintance of that little gypsy lady who is staying next door.” The boy looked up with almost startled inquiry. He had not supposed that their meeting had been observed. Then a hard expression shadowed his eyes. “Huh, I might have known that sly cat would pry around. I suppose she told you.”

The good-natured doctor wanted to laugh aloud. He quite agreed with the boy’s description of the nurse, but, of course, it would not be ethical to permit the patient to know this and so he said, assuming an expression of professional interest merely: “Miss Squeers mentioned it to me, Robert, and of course, in her capacity as nurse, she feels, in the absence of your mother, that she should try, if possible, to influence you against a friendship that your mother might not wish you to make.”

The boy’s eyes flashed and he drew himself to a sitting posture. “Doctor Wainridge,” he said vehemently, “how can I ever get well if I am kept a prisoner with a jailor whom I hate, hate, hate! Can’t you dismiss Miss Squeers from my case and just look after me yourself. Gee whiz, Doctor Wainridge, aren’t there servants enough around this place to make me some broth and give me a bath.”

The doctor glanced at the closed door and put his fingers on his lips as a suggestion that the boy speak in a lower voice. “I cannot dismiss Miss Squeers,” he said, “because in your mother’s cable to me she asked that she be called, but, of course, as you know, a doctor’s orders must be carried out, and so I now order, that, until your mother dismisses me, you are to see as much of the little gypsy girl as possible, if you find her companionship amusing. You are merely children and as such need young companionship.” Then, after feeling the lad’s pulse and taking his temperature, he said loud and cheerily, “Well, Robert Widdemere, you feel pretty well I judge. Fever’s all gone and you look rested.”

“There wasn’t anything the matter with me yesterday only I was mad, mad clear through.” The boy cast a vindictive glance at the closed door on the other side of which they could both visualize a wrathful nurse, trying, if possible, to hear the conference she had been barred from. Then the boy confessed. “It was this way, Doctor Wainridge, that nice girl, Lady Red Bird, the one next door, told me that she would come back to the hedge yesterday afternoon to ask how I was getting on, and that nurse must have heard, for she took me driving and kept me away until I was so angry that it wore me all out, and I had a fever. Now, what worries me is, will Lady Red Bird ever come back again? It isn’t a bit likely that she will. Girls have too much pride to chase after a fellow, if he isn’t there when he says he will be. She’ll think I’m a cad. I just know she won’t come again, and I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t.”

“Neither would I blame her, Robert,” the doctor agreed. “Now, laddie, listen to me. If you will rest all this morning and eat a good lunch and not be wrathful at your nurse whatever she may say or do, I’ll come over this afternoon and take you to call on your new friend. I’ve been planning for ever so long to drop in and see Miss Dahlia. I’ve been their family physician more years than I like to remember. Well, sonny, how does, that plan strike you.”

The boy looked up brightly. “Bully,” he ejaculated. Then anxiously he inquired, “Shall you tell the nurse?”

“I’ll tell her to get you ready for a drive as I shall call for you at two. Then I will let Miss Dahlia know that I am to call on her at two-thirty and would like to meet her protêge.”

The old doctor was indeed pleased to see how quickly his suggestion brightened the lad’s face.

Reaching out a thin hand, he took the big brown one as he said; “Doc, you’re a trump! I needn’t feel that I haven’t a friend when you’re at the wheel. Now I’m going to rest hard until noon.”

CHAPTER XII.

A PLEASANT CALL

Miss Squeers found it hard to follow orders that were so against her own judgment. She well knew Mrs. Widdemere, for had she not been in that home during the illness of Robert’s father and had she not found his mother a woman after her own heart! “If a person is born an aristocrat,” the nurse told herself, “she ought to act like one and be haughty and proud. How would a peacock look trying to put herself on a social footing with a pullet?”

All the time that she was assisting Robert Widdemere to dress for the drive that he was to take with Doctor Wainridge, the woman’s thin colorless lips grew tighter and thinner. The physician had not told where he was going to take their patient, but she knew, as well as if she had been able to hear through the closed door. She consoled herself with the knowledge that her turn to triumph would come in time. They did not know, however much they might suspect it, that she had written the mother all that she knew of this disgraceful friendship. Doctor Wainridge would be peremptorially dismissed, of that Miss Squeers was certain. For that matter the doctor was sure of the same thing, but what he hoped was that his patient should by that time be so far along on the road to recovery that he would not be harmed by his mother’s anger or subsequent action. That Mrs. Widdemere would forbid the friendship, he well knew. But his office, at present, was to help the lad to rouse himself from the indifferent stupor into which he had fallen since his father’s death.

The doctor arrived at two, and for half an hour they drove about the picturesque country lane on either side of which were the vast estates of the wealthy dwellers of the far famed foot-hill section.

At length they left the highway and turned into the drive leading to the Barrington home. The physician was saying: – “I was up in the big city when it all happened and so another doctor was called when the accident occured. I am referring to the accident which brought the gypsy girl into the home where I presume she is to remain.” Then he laughed. “It is well for the girl that the haughty older sister has gone away for an indefinite stay for she had undertaken, so the story goes, to civilize and Christianize this little heathen.”

The boy nodded. “Lady Red Bird told me. She said she was just ready to run away because they were going to put her in a convent school, when a telegram came and Miss Ursula Barrington left at once for the East.”

As they neared the house, they saw a very pretty sight. The girl of whom they had been talking, looking more then ever like a gypsy in the costume she had worn when she had first arrived, was dancing up and down the paths of the glowing garden shaking her tambourine, as she had danced on that never-to-be-forgotten day when she had been there with little Tirol. Nearby on a bench the younger Miss Barrington sat with her lace crochet now and then dropping it to her lap to smile at the girl. Suddenly she called. “Nan, dearie, the company has come.” The girl dropped to a marble bench, but a side glance toward the drive showed her that both the doctor and the boy had witnessed her performance.

“I don’t care, Miss Dahlia,” she said, tossing her dark hair back and out of her eyes, “I put this dress on purposely that Robert Widdemere might see I’m not ashamed that I am a gypsy. I’m proud, proud, proud because I belong to Manna Lou.”

“Of course you are, dearie,” the gentle little woman rose and advanced to greet the newcomers.

“Doctor Wainridge,” she said, “I’m so glad that you have come to meet our dear adopted daughter. It was a real regret to me that you were out of town at the time of the accident, if something which results in great joy and happiness can be called by so formidable a name. And this,” she held out a slender white hand toward the glowing girl, “is our Nan.”

The doctor, whose broad-brimmed black felt was under one arm, shook hands with Miss Dahlia and then with the girl. Turning, he beamed on the lad as he said, “Surely, Miss Barrington, you remember this boy, although you may not have seen him recently.”

“Indeed I do! Robert, how you have grown.” Then noting his pale face, she said with kindly solicitude, “You are not yet strong. Shall we go into the house? Would it not be more comfortable there?”

But the doctor, after glancing at his watch replied: “I fear that I cannot remain today, as I have other patients to see, but if you are willing to entertain your young neighbor, I will return for him in just one hour.”

Robert’s face brightened. “That’s great of you, doctor, to leave me in so pleasant a place.” Then turning to Miss Dahlia who was looking at him pityingly, he confessed. “I’m bored to death at home with that specter of a nurse watching over me for all the world like a vulture swinging around the head of some poor creature that it expects is soon to die.”

The doctor had been glancing about. There was a summer house near in which there were comfortably cushioned rustic chairs and a table. It was where Miss Dahlia and Nan had their daily lessons.

“That would be a pleasant place for you children to go for a real visit, isn’t it?” he suggested. Miss Dahlia nodded smilingly and Nan led the way to the summer house. Miss Dahlia then walked at the doctor’s side toward his car as she wished to ask his advice about her headaches.

“Isn’t he a great sport?” Robert looked after his friend and ally admiringly, then he blurted out: – “Lady Red Bird, that sly cat of a nurse was trying to keep us apart. That’s why I wasn’t at the gate in the hedge yesterday. If I’d been strong enough I would have walked over here when I reached home and explained, but I was lots worse.”

The lad glanced anxiously into the flushed face of the girl. He feared she was hurt with him. “I say, Miss Nan, you’ll forgive my not being there. I wouldn’t be such a cad, if I could help it. You know that, don’t you?”

He was greatly relieved with the reply which was, “I wasn’t there myself, Robert Widdemere. Miss Dahlia had one of her headaches and was so sick I didn’t wan’t to leave her. I was sure you would understand.” Then, quickly changing the subject, she added. “This is a real comfortable chair. It’s where Miss Dahlia sits when she teaches me to read. Oh, I love reading,” she exclaimed, “and stories. I used to make them up out of my head to tell Little Tirol and the other children. Little wild foxes I called them.”

There was a sudden far away wistful expression in the girl’s dark eyes as she gazed out of the vine-hung door of the summer house, and the lad watching her, wondered that he had ever doubted that she was truly a gypsy. Surely, in that costume, there could be no question about it.

He said gently, “Lady Red Bird, I believe you sometimes wish you could go back to the old life.” She turned wide startled eyes toward him as she replied in a tense voice, “I’m going back when the black dragon comes again. I won’t stay here with her. I won’t be civilized for her. She doesn’t love me like Miss Dahlia does.”

“But doesn’t the wild gypsy life lure you?” the boy leaned forward interested. “I always imagine it as romantic and carefree.”

Again the girl looked at him startled, then replied in a low voice. “Would you think it was romantic to have to do everything that a cruel, black-hearted Anselo Spico and his demon mother said to do? Would you call it being carefree when you were thrashed till the blood came if you wouldn’t dance at the gorigo inns?

“I staid till little Tirol died. Anselo Spico had to beat me first, before he could get at that poor little cripple. I staid to take little Tirol’s beatings, but when he was dead, I ran away and came here.”

Robert Widdemere hardly knew what to say. “Lady Red Bird, I thought you told me you were proud of being a gypsy and that you loved the life.”

There was an instant change and springing up she flung her arms wide with almost a wistful cry – “I love living out in the open, with only the starry sky for a roof, and the branches of trees swaying, swaying over my head when I sleep. I love to ride on my pony Binnie away, away, away, to feel my hair blowing in the wind and to have nothing to do but live.”

Robert sighed. “I’d like right well to be that kind of a gypsy,” he said. “I’d like to wander away, away, away from nurses and houses and routine studies.”

Miss Dahlia appeared in the door and she was followed by a maid with a tray. “I thought you children might like a tea party,” she said, “and if you do not mind, I will join you.”

The hour was soon up and the doctor bore away a very thoughtful lad. “Lady Red Bird is a real gypsy,” he was thinking, “and I don’t believe she will civilize.”

CHAPTER XIII.

MYSTERIOUS REVELATIONS

That was the beginning of a series of visits. Sometimes these two planned to meet on the beach and always Nan wore her gypsy dress. Somehow she was determined that her new friend should not forget who she really was.

A week had passed and they were becoming well acquainted. Being constantly questioned about her past life, Nan had told many stories of the gypsies and adventures.

They were sitting in the sun on the sand one morning and Nan was being especially thoughtful.

“A penny for your thoughts, Lady Red Bird?” the boy asked.

“I was wondering where I will find the caravan when I run away.” She looked up, a strange eagerness in her expressive dark eyes. “I must find them when I am eighteen for Manna Lou is to tell me then about my own mother.”

Hesitatingly the boy suggested: “Would you be greatly disappointed if she were to tell you that you are not a real gypsy?” He almost feared that she would flare at him wrathfully as she had that first time, when he had scoffed at the idea of her being one. But instead, she turned toward him dark eyes in which there was the light of a simple conviction. “There is no question about that. I asked Manna Lou, and she said – ‘It is real gypsy blood that has given you that dark skin Leichen Nan.’ But more, she would not tell. Manna Lou never lied.”

The boy leaned forward eagerly. “But she promised to tell you more when you were eighteen?”

“Yes.”

“Then there is something to tell.”

“Yes. But I am a gypsy.”

The boy smiled. “I believe you would be disappointed if you found that you were not.”

“But I am! Manna Lou said so. Manna Lou does not lie.” It was always like arguing in a circle. From whatever point they started, they swung back to that same statement which was final in the mind of the girl. Suddenly the boy asked; “Have you always lived in California?”

“Oh no, no!” Nan replied. “We fled from Rumania. That is my country. There are many gypsies in that land across the sea. Manna Lou said there are more than 200,000 gypsies.”

One word had attracted and held the attention of the lad. “Lady Red Bird, why did you say ‘fled?’ Did your band have to leave Rumania?”

She gleamed at him quickly, suspiciously. Then she replied dully, “I don’t know. I suppose so! Anselo Spico and his queen mother Mizella, they do wrong things. They steal – ” she paused, and the boy put in suggestively: “Do they steal white children?”

Scornfully the girl flung back. “No, never! Horses here in this country, but over there it was more – I never knew, something that made Anselo Spico afraid. We traveled day and night.”

The boy said nothing but sat poking at the sand with a stick. It looked very mysterious to him. “You don’t know what that Spico, or whatever it is you call him; you don’t know what crime he had committed that he left your native country so suddenly?”

The girl shook her head. “And we didn’t stop in the East where we landed, but we came right on and on and on till we reached California.”

The boy was thinking aloud. “It seems strange to me that the authorities where the boats stop would permit wandering bands of gypsies to land in this country without knowing what they come for, or why they are leaving their own native land.”

“What do you mean, authorities? What are they?” The girl was plainly perplexed.

“Why when a big vessel arrives at Castle Garden in New York, every passenger has been given a permit to land from Ellis Island where they first stop. Oh, there’s a lot of red tape before anyone can come ashore, and I should think a whole band of gypsies would have considerable difficulty passing the examiners, that is what I mean by authorities.”

Still the girl looked at him blankly as one who did not understand. “We landed in the night on a lonely marshy shore. Florida they called it. The sailing barge that brought us across the sea left before daybreak, and when the sun came up we were in our caravans riding across a flat lonely country. We saw very few people because we slept days and passed through the villages at night. The gorigo police sometimes followed us to see that we kept going until we were out of the town but nobody stopped us. Then, for weeks and weeks we were crossing the wide sandy desert. We camped a long time in the Rocky Mountains. I never did understand that, I mean why we seemed to be hiding. I thought maybe Anselo Spico had stolen something and we were waiting until it would be safe to go on, but I heard Vestor report one night, when he came back from town that there had been no mail from Rumania and so I supposed that we had been waiting there long enough for Anselo Spico to write someone in Rumania and that we were waiting for the reply. At last it came and the message in that letter angered him terribly. He seized a whip and began to lash poor little Tirol. I threw myself on the child and he began to beat me. It was his Queen Mother Mizella, who stopped him by saying. I never forgot the words though they meant nothing to me. ‘Bedone with that! You’re like to kill her as may line your purse yet.’ He snarled an answer, but he let us both alone after that or at least he never beat me again.”

Robert Widdemere was more than ever convinced that Nan had been stolen as a child and that the gypsies were hoping someday to receive a rich reward for her, but what he could not understand was why, if that were true, it had been so long in coming.

If she had own relations in Rumania, they surely would have been glad to pay the ransom money as soon as they found the whereabouts of the child.

But of his thoughts, he said nothing. After a few moments, he asked; “What did you do next, Lady Red Bird?”

“Our caravan left the mountains and we traveled slowly westward. Manna Lou was kinder to me than ever before, and she taught me to play on a banjo which she said had belonged to my father. She did not know much about it, but I was so glad, glad to have it.”

The girl’s face darkened. “That was the last mean thing Anselo Spico did to me. He found me playing the banjo, and it seemed to anger him, or some memory was called up by it that he did. Anyhow he seized it and smashed it to pieces on a rock. How I’ve hated him ever since!”

Again there was one of the swift changes, and Nan turned toward the boy a face softened and beautified with tender memories. “My father played before the Queen of Rumania once and received a medal. Manna Lou told me.”

The boy was indeed puzzled. “It’s all a mystery and I’m afraid I won’t be able to fathom it,” he told himself.

“And now I am to be a musician, and I shall play before a queen,” the girl leaped to her feet and was dancing about on the hard sand, startling to flight a flock of shining winged white-gulls that circled in the air over the sea. The boy also rose and feeling much stronger, he tried to dance, but was soon out of breath and laughingly sank back on the sand higher up where it was dry and warm.

“What I need,” he said to himself, “is a costume to match Lady Red Bird’s. Then I will be able to dance with her.”

The idea pleased him, and he thought of it, smiling to himself.

At last the hour came for their parting. “Remember our agreement. Tomorrow will be Thanksgiving and we are to go for a horseback ride.” Then catching both hands of the girl, the boy looked into her laughing eyes as he said with sincere earnestness. “If I have indeed regained my strength, I have no one to thank but Lady Red Bird.”

“Oh, yes you have. It was Doctor Wainridge who brought you here. You must thank him as well.”

“And also dear gentle Miss Dahlia,” the lad concluded, “Good-bye until tomorrow.”

CHAPTER XIV.

THE MOUNTAIN RIDE

Thanksgiving came and at the appointed hour Nan was waiting at the beach gate when she saw a gypsy riding toward her. Nan’s first thought was one of terror, for the approaching horseman looked as Anselo Spico had when arrayed in his best, a blue velvet corduroy suit, a scarlet silk sash and a wide felt hat edged with bright dangles.

“Oh, Robert Widdemere!” Nan cried, when she saw who it really was. “You looked so like Anselo Spico as you rode along by the sea, that I was about to run and hide. Where did you get that costume?”

“At a shop in town where one may procure whatever one wishes for a masquerade,” the laughing lad replied as he leaped to the ground and made a deep, swinging bow with his gay hat.

“I like it, Lady Red Bird,” he enthusiastically declared, “and I do believe that I will purchase this outfit. Won’t we create a stir in the countryside as we ride together down the Coast Highway.”

Nan laughed joyously. “It becomes you, Robert Widdemere,” she said. It was hard for the girl to believe that the handsome, flushed youth at her side was the same pale sickly lad whom she had first met less than a month before.

During that time these two had become well acquainted, taking short walks together and reading Ivanhoe while they rested. Miss Dahlia found that her pupil was making remarkable progress under her new tutor, moreover she liked the youth with his frank, good-looking face and she was glad to have Nan companied by someone near her own age.

Miss Dahlia appeared at the beach gate to see them off on their long planned ride and she called after them, “Robert, lad, be sure to come back and share our Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Thank you, Miss Dahlia, I would like to,” the youth replied doffing his hat. Then the little lady watched them ride away and turn up the mountain road.

In her heart there was a strange misgiving that she could not understand. “What if her sister, Miss Ursula, should suddenly return,” she thought. Then indeed would Miss Dahlia be censored for having permitted Nan to again assume the raiment of a heathen.

Never before had Nan seemed more charming to the lad than she did on that glorious morning when side by side they rode up a narrow canon road leading toward the mountains.

“See, Nan,” the young philosopher called, “life is full of contrasts. Now we are in a blaze of warmth and sunlight, and, not a stone’s throw ahead of us, is the darkness and dampness of the canon, where the pine trees stand so solemn and still, like sentinels guarding the mysteries that lie beyond.”

The girl drew rein and gazed with big dark eyes at the boy. During the past month she had learned his many moods. In a serious voice she said. “I sometimes wonder how we dare go on, since we do not know the trail that is just ahead. I don’t mean here,” she lifted one hand from her horse’s head and pointed toward the high walled canon in front of them. “I mean, I wonder how we dare go along life’s trail when it is, so often, as though we are blind-folded.”

The boy’s face brightened. “Nan,” he said, with a note of tenderness in his voice which the girl always noticed when he spoke of his father. “Did I ever tell you how my father loved the writings of Henry Van Dyke? It didn’t matter what they were about, fishing, or hiking, or philosophising. My father felt that they were kin, because they both so loved the great out-of-doors. Just now, when you wondered how we dare go ahead when we cannot know what awaits us on life’s trail, I happened to recall a few lines which Dad so often used to recite. They are from Van Dyke’s poem called ‘God of the Open Air.’”